IT’S NOT often these days that the Daily Post finds much to celebrate in this column, but every now and then there is a ray of sunshine to warm all our hearts.

Today the world can join Chile in rejoicing at the successful rescue of the 33 trapped miners who have endured more than two months at the bottom of a mine.

The way they have coped and the efforts put in to save them tell you so much about the human spirit. This really is mankind at its best, at its most stoical and determined.

The toughness and good humour of the miners is worthy of huge admiration. Miners are a breed apart from the rest of us. They endure a lifestyle the rest of us could not cope with – and that’s when things go according to plan and you get home at the end of your shift.

And miners and their families bond in communities as close and tightly-knit as you will ever see. That is why it is such a shame that Wales and Britain as a whole has lost virtually all its coal mines.

Elsewhere in the world, however, the colliery wheels continue to turn, bringing not just coal but other vitally important riches to the surface, such as the copper and gold from this Chilean mine.

One thing which has never changed since the 1930s when George Orwell wrote so movingly about the life of miners, is their dedication to a job which is both arduous and dangerous, in an atmosphere of blistering heat, noise and dust. All miners know that they do a job which could one day kill them – but they still do it. And perhaps it is this ability to accept danger, that has given the Chilean miners such reserves of strength.

Closer to home, there is another cause to celebrate today – and that is the High Court ruling which should allow Liverpool FC to be freed from the grip of their current disastrous owners and ushers in the prospect of a takeover by people with their hearts in this great club.

Liverpool have made a dreadful start to the season but there is plenty of time to turn things round and this decision should be the catalyst to do exactly that.